The Beauty of the Gospel

The Gospel is beautiful. Incredibly beautiful. It's so beautiful, in fact, that nothing that pleases God has ever been accomplished without it by a human being (Hebrews 11:8).

But I think I often neglect half of it.

I think we tend to see the gospel this way: 

We all have this terrible burden to bear. This burden is sin, and it could be likened to a cup that we carry around. Inside this cup is every gross, nasty, grimy sin from every ungodly act, thought, and motivation we've ever had. And this ungodliness separates us from the Holy One.

This is where the Gospel steps in. Through His perfect life, His death on the Cross, and His resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ has taken the sins of those He calls His children upon His shoulders. In effect, he has taken my cup of grime and poured it on Himself. Then He defeated the physical and spiritual death that my cup of grime deserves. By trusting in this Truth, I am His child.

But, if sin removal alone is our view of the Gospel we're missing half of it. You see, I often feel as though Christ has removed my cup of sinful grime but now I carry around an empty up. I'm desperate to fill it with my goodness. Sadly, I often go so far as to try to fill this cup by being loved and accepted by others... even my wife.

But all of my attempts to feel good about myself don't add a single drop of righteousness to my cup. In fact, since they're usually motivated by pride, they only add to my pile of grime Jesus died for.

The Truth of the Gospel is that Jesus Christ's righteous life, undeserving death, and hell-defeating resurrection not only bears my cup of sin-- it fills my cup with righteousness.

That's why the Gospel is so beautiful. God is incomparably Holy. I am indescribably wicked. Of myself, I have nothing to offer Him to close the gap between us. But, in His love, justice, mercy, and grace, God made a way.  

He made impossible demands of us to be righteous, and He beautifully and completely met those demands, in Christ, on behalf of His children.

"For our sake [God] made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might be the righteousness of God." --- 1 Corinthians 5:21

A Page in the Chapter

For those of you who don't know, my brother, Andy, is forgoing his last semester as a senior in high school. Instead, he accepted a job offer to be a page at the Iowa House of Representatives for a semester. That means he gets paid to sit in the House during debates and formalities. He spends most of his time answering phones and running errands around the Capitol Building for the reps. A pretty interesting job, I must say.

He seems to be liking it so far, and has been keeping a daily blog of his experience called A Page in the Chapter. Check it out if you're interested.

Andy also has a sense of humor that, well... let's just say it runs in the family. He likes puns. Here's one of his recent posts on his blog-- it made my day:

"I'd like to share a few observations which have come from attending committee meetings and the like:
1) Agriculture - This committee is a homely bunch because they are so deeply rooted in Iowa.
2) Economic Growth - These are always very stimulating meetings.
3) Environmental Protection - For some reason, topics in these meetings are always complicated.  Almost the whole time is spent clearing the air of confusion.
4) Transportation - To me, it is obvious that the Iowa DOT is in a rut.
5) Veterans' Affairs - People are always trying to sit in on these meetings.  To ensure that no unauthorized persons enter, I am always on Guard.
6) Judiciary - I have never sat in on a judiciary committee because another page has requested all of its meetings.  It's just not fair.
7) Labor - I dread attending these meetings - I always end up doing hard work.
8) Commerce - It's business as usual.
9) Ways & Means - As far as I can tell, this is the committee that finds ways of being mean by taxing Iowans.
10) Education - I haven't really learned anything from this committee.
11) Public Safety - I've only been scheduled to this committee once. Unfortunately, on my way to it, I slipped on a dangerously wet floor."

 

Some Videos From the WWW

[Click into the actual post if you can't see the videos.]

Barrel-eye fish: God's awesomest creation in the animal world?




Chatty parrot: God's second-awesomest creation in the animal world?




Pick-pocket extraordinaire: I'm impressed and scared simultaneously (skip to 2:35, if you're pressed for time)




Jaw-dropping foosball tricks: Someone had too much time on their hands

Neighbor Update

A quick update, for anyone wondering how our ministry to our neighbors is going. (Peruse my older posts if you're curious of what I'm talking about....)

We haven't even seen Esther lately. We figure her mom caught wind of the fact that she was coming over to our place without her knowledge. Definitely a bummer, since we thought she'd be coming to VBS and possibly bringing her family to church with us...

Alan moved away a year ago, so we don't get blessed by his amazing cooking and his available car-port anymore.

Frank and Kevin are almost never around anymore-- which is ok, considering we watched Kevin and Alan get in a fist-fight before Alan moved, and Jerry suspects Frank of stealing his car.

Which actually worked out ok for us. About the time Alan moved (and a new tenant who uses their car-port moved in), Jerry's car got stolen. Since we're friends with Jerry (and he won't get a new car because his health won't allow him to drive anyways) he's letting us use his car-port for Sam's car. Huge blessing.

All that to say: there isn't much going on anymore in regards to ministry with our neighbors.

Not that we haven't tried. This Christmas, Sam had the awesome idea to hand out little baskets of homemade treats to our neighbors. We spent a Saturday in December making our goodies together and giving them to the other people in our building. We also decided to be those super-weird Christian types and include a gospel tract with each box. (It's actually a really good tract that very clearly explains the gospel with lots of scriptural support.) Anyways, we got a few weird looks when we rang the doorbell and said, "We made some some goodies for you because we love Christmas! There's also a little booklet in there that explains why we love Christmas so much." We prayed that our neighbors would come and talk to us about the gospel, but no one has yet. It is (and always has been) in God's hands, I suppose.

Maybe things will pick up when it's warmer outside.  :)